Assessment of medical students’ attitudes on social media use in medicine: a cross-sectional study
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Social media has created a revolution in health services. Information available on the Internet and via social media is now being used as reference guides for sensitive health issues by nonprofessionals, physicians, and medical students. When used by physicians and medical students, social media has the potential to raise issues such as the blurring of the line between professional and private lives, patient relations, and medical ethics. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to evaluate the use of social media and attitudes toward its use in medicine among medical students. METHODS: Medical students from Afyon Kocatepe University, Faculty of Medicine (Afyonkarahisar, Turkey) were asked to participate in a survey consisting of two sections, the first containing questions assessing the frequency of social media use and the second regarding attitudes toward the use of social media in medicine. RESULTS: Survey responses indicated that 93.4% of medical students used social media and 89.3% used social media for professional purposes. Factor analysis showed that attitudes toward social media are based on five factors: professional usefulness, popularity, ethics, barriers, and innovativeness. A structural equation model revealed the highest positive correlation between usefulness and innovativeness; ethics had a low but positive correlation with other factors. CONCLUSIONS: Although social media is being used extensively by medical students, they appear unaware of possible ethical issues. Therefore, social media guidelines should be developed.
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Studies investigated whether participants mixed professional and personal information and activities on social media sites (blended profiles) or adopted a separation strategy (dual citizenship).
“Studies also investigated the purpose of SM use, whether participants mixed professional and personal information and activities on SM sites (blended profiles) or adopted a separation strategy where professional information and activities were clearly separated from personal ones (dual citizenship) [34,39,69,78,79,91,96,97,106].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
The Methods > Measures section says students were asked whether they used social media for personal or professional purposes, supporting the claim that the study investigated purpose of use. It does not say the study assessed whether students mixed those activities on one profile or kept them separate; the Background discusses that boundary as an issue, not as a measured strategy. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredStudents' use of social media for health education has been overwhelmingly higher in the last few years, with almost the same proportion using social media often or always.
“Students’ use of SM for health education is overwhelmingly higher in the last few years, with almost the same proportion using SM often or always [69,136].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
The Discussion reports high social-media use among medical students in Turkey: 93.4% used it, and 89.3% used it for professional purposes. The Results report that 74.4% used Facebook daily. These findings do not establish a rise over the last few years or nearly equal proportions using social media often and always for health education. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredA lack of free time or time constraint was often recognized as a barrier to health care professionals' use of social media in the context of e-professionalism, as well as a lack of knowledge or technical skills for use of social media.
“A lack of free time or time constraint was often recognized as a barrier [39,69,74,79,91,93,96], as well as a lack of knowledge or technical skills for use of SM [33,39,76,79,93,118].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
The Discussion (page unavailable) says medical students’ social media use was limited by concern that it would take too much time, and Results Table 3 includes being too busy and lacking time to learn professional use as barriers. The paper does not identify a lack of knowledge or technical skills as a barrier, and its findings concern medical students rather than health care professionals generally. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredBlurred boundaries between professional and personal spheres of social media use, with concerns about exposure of private life or separating private and professional profiles, have been presented in numerous studies in this review.
“Blurred boundaries between professional and personal spheres of SM use [34, 39, 47, 51, 69, 78, 79, 91, 96, 97, 106], with concerns about exposure of one’s private life or separating private and professional profiles have been presented in numerous studies of this review.”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
Lack of free time or time constraint was often recognized as a barrier.
“Lack of free time or time constraint was often recognized as a barrier [39,69,74,79,91,93,96], as well as lack of knowledge or technical skills for use of SM [33,39,76,79,93,118].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
Social media have enabled the creation of communities for support.
“Besides providing the opportunity for connecting with others and sharing experiences [38,39,46,53,69,72,78,106-108], SM have enabled the creation of communities for support.”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
Evolving possibilities of social media allow health care professionals to reach a large audience and can increase their popularity among colleagues and patients.
“Evolving the possibilities of SM allows HCPs to reach a large audience and can act to increase their popularity among colleagues and patients [69].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
Benefits of social media on e-professionalism of health care professionals can be seen as improvements of established networks or possibilities for collaboration through social media sites.
“Benefits of SM on e-professionalism of HCPs can be seen as improvements of established networks or possibilities for collaboration through SM sites [33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 44-46, 53, 69, 72, 76, 78, 79, 92, 97, 106-108, 117].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
Blurred boundaries between professional and personal spheres of social media use, with concerns about exposure of one's private life, presenting details of personal life, or separating private and professional profiles, have been presented in numerous studies in this review.
“Blurred boundaries between professional and personal spheres of SM use [34, 39, 47, 51, 69, 78, 79, 91, 96, 97, 106], with concerns about exposure of one’s private life, presenting details of personal life, or separating private and professional profiles, have been presented in numerous studies in this review.”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [69]
Studies on healthcare students in the Arab and Middle Eastern region supported the need to develop clear guidelines delineating the safe and professional use of social media by future healthcare providers.
“In the Arab and Middle Eastern region, studies on healthcare students also supported the need to develop clear guidelines delineating the safe and professional use of social media by future healthcare providers [32, 39–41].”
From Future healthcare providers and professionalism on social media: a cross-sectional study (2022) · cites this paper as [41]
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- Authors
- Avcı, K., Çelikden, S. G., Eren, S., & Aydenizöz, D.
- Affiliations
- Afyon Kocatepe University (TR)
- Corresponding author
- Avcı, Kadriye
- Venue
- BMC Medical Education
- Published
- 2015-02-15
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 18-18
- ISSN
- 1472-6920 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4372282
- OpenAlex
- W2019309871
- Cited by
- 132
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 12.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- BMC Medical Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Innovations in Medical Education
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Keywords
- social media use, medical students, attitudes toward social media, medical ethics, professional boundaries, social media policy, innovativeness, barriers to social media use
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Attitude, Cross-Sectional Studies, Female, Humans, Male, Medicine, Surveys and Questionnaires, Students, Medical, Turkey, Social Media
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